There is no country where the war in Ukraine has not had a significant impact. In the case of South Korea, the effects were disruptive both on the economic (as in the rest of the world) and on the geopolitical level. A former country official summed up the situation to me like this: “If you are Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, the lesson is simple. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine renounced the nuclear weapons inherited from the USSR by signing the ‘Budapest memorandum’ of 1994, a document according to which its safety was guaranteed by Russia and other great powers. But in the end that document did not protect Kiev from invasion, as the possession of some nuclear warheads could have done ”.
For Kim Jong-un, of course, the threat does not come from Russia – his regime was created by Stalin’s own USSR after World War II, and Pyongyang has just recognized the two pro-Russian republics of eastern Ukraine – but from states United. The “nuclear versus safety guarantees” dynamic, however, remains the same. And if the chances of the North Korean regime abandoning the nuclear weapon were already slim before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, now they are non-existent. South Korea is aware of this, even if it does not openly admit it. The consequences, moreover, would be many and dangerous.
In addition to the arms issue, the invasion of Ukraine has also rekindled a doubt that had emerged in recent years in Seoul. One wonders: does it still make sense to rely on the US “umbrella” that has protected the country since 1953? This question had become urgent during the presidency of Donald Trump, who first promised to withdraw US troops stationed in South Korea and then quintupled the amount of Seoul’s support for soldiers. Not to mention his “flirtation” with Kim Jong-un, which ultimately proved useless to achieve peace.
All this has destabilized the relationship between Washington and Seoul, however crucial for a country squeezed between the ambitions of China, the nuclear threat of North Korea and a historically complicated relationship with the other giant of the region, Japan.
Now, like so many other countries around the world, South Korea is forced to wonder if the United States would really answer the call if the country were hit by a serious crisis. The current president of the United States Joe Biden has tried to reassure everyone about his possible intervention, and the new South Korean president Yoon Seok-yul, who has positions close to the United States, has pushed hard on rapprochement with Washington. But the political uncertainties sweeping the United States in recent months, starting with the dubious outcome of the mid-term elections scheduled for the autumn, worry Seoul.
As proof of this malaise, for example, a group of intellectuals linked to leftist circles chose to break a taboo and ask, in a forum published in the press, that South Korea be able to use the nuclear deterrent. It would be a strategic break, but the majority of South Koreans are in favor of the idea, aware of the threats that have developed in Asia.
South Korea, therefore, is one of the powers in the region that no longer see themselves as passive allies of the United States as in the days of the Cold War. A former country official spoke to me in enthusiastic tones about the French general Charles de Gaulle and the European strategic autonomy proposed by Emmanuel Macron. And he concluded with a surprising judgment: “The United States is our protector and at the same time the country that does not want peace between us and North Korea”. Thus the concept of alliance takes on a new form, in the multipolar world where the rules are still poorly defined. In South Korea as in other parts of the world.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)